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I totally endorse the new initiative from the Dubai Health Authority in introducing ‘happiness hours’ for hard working employees who complete their tasks to a high standard: the reward being that they will be allowed to leave work three hours early once a month.

Of course, the key to employee motivation with increased performance and productivity is dependent upon excellent management initiatives and good communications.

Provided that leaders appreciate and value their teams, then they will find they have a more engaged and inspired workforce who will always give of their best.

Phrases that increase performance and productivity

However, often the challenge is that many managers rarely know how to give praise and, therefore, a simple ‘thank you’ or ‘you’ve done really well and I appreciate that’…is rarely said.

'Thank you...','I appreciate what you have done','Well done'...

If managers bring this language into the average working day, they will find that they will have happy workers with enhanced engagement and increased productivity.

On the other hand, where employees feel like they are merely ‘a number’, then all the ‘happiness hours’ in the world will not help!

We know that managing people is not easy. If leaders don’t have the necessary vital communication skills, then they need to be trained to develop this skillset as part of their leadership portfolio.

Communications is key to a successful business! To motivate its workforce, the DNA has to train its managers, at all levels, to recognise that the company’s most important asset is its human resource.

Book Carole as a Motivational Speaker Now! She will deliver a charismatic, high-impact keynote presentation at your next conference.

Sitting on the plane coming back from Vienna, after delivering a keynote speech to an audience of European realtors from Spain, Austria, Czech Republic and elsewhere, I reflected on how it had been to speak from the platform, in English, and then having to wait for my words to be simultaneously translated to the audience in Spanish, German and Czech.

The three teams of two translators each, sat in closed glass-windowed booths at the side of the auditorium. This group of people could either make or break a conference. It didn’t matter how much effort I put into a presentation, if it was not translated correctly, then the communication with my audience would not succeed.

Before the presentation, I went over to them to introduce myself. ‘You are very important in my life for the next two hours’, I told them ‘So I will try and speak slowly to make your job easier’. We all smiled.

And now sitting here on the plane, I think about how many times our communication skills actually fail in delivering the message that we want. We may speak too quickly, or we do not listen attentively. The result is that although we may speak – many times we are not heard.

Mis-communication

In our everyday lives, we may assume that what we have said has been actually absorbed and understood, and we take it for granted that this is the case. Unfortunately, many times it is not. Either because the other person was not concentrating – they were looking at their computer screen, their Blackberry or just distracted elsewhere. So we make the assumption, ‘I speak – you listen – you retain – you have heard me’.

Not so! I speak – you ostensibly listen but you don’t necessarily concentrate and you certainly do not retain the conversation because you didn’t really hear what I said. Think how many misunderstandings have taken place over the years due entirely to an unintentional disconnect between speaker and listener.

Sometimes, we go down the route of actually paying others to listen to us, secure in the knowledge that if we pay to be heard, our words will be remembered.

When I used to work at the Samaritans [a 24-hour crisis helpline], so many callers would say these very simple words at the end of a conversation: ‘thank you for listening’. We were trained never to reply ‘it’s nothing’. Of course, it is not ‘nothing’, it is very much ‘something’! It takes our full attention to really listen to others, and to understand their message correctly.

The net result can be immeasurable. In my opinion, there is nothing more powerful than giving of one’s time to someone else: making the time to listen to the other person – without always interrupting them to give them our own opinion.

Perhaps tonight, maybe make the time to sit and talk with your wife, your husband, your child or your friend. Turn off the computer and the television. Listen carefully and with full attention to what they are saying. Finally, when it is your turn to speak, make sure you recount back to them what they have said to you – and then see how that makes both of you feel!

… and so, after that presentation in Vienna, I went over to the translators, again, to thank them. They and their listening skills had indeed been so very important for those two hours of my life.

Key Learning Points About Attentive Listening

You have to make the effort to listen attentively

We are not always heard when we speak

If you have really listened to what someone has said, you will be able to repeat the conversation back to them.

Can you think of time when you were told to ‘stop interrupting’? Ring any bells? Do leave us your comment here.

Experienced negotiators often make use of a subtle form of questioning that does not make people feel they are being questioned at all – Active Listening.

This is the technique of guiding a conversation by making minimal gestures and utterances that suggest empathy, while not actually indicating agreement. Attention is diverted away from the questioner and on to the speaker, so it feels to them more like an interview than an interrogation.

I once had to counsel a teenage immigrant girl in a chemicals factory, who was being bullied about her poor English. This was obviously a very difficult brief, and at first she could only keep breaking down in despair. But by accepting what she was saying to me, giving her my full attention, and giving her the chance to speak at her own pace, I eventually encouraged her to open up, and we were able to take the issue forward.

You can see the value of effective communication skills in particular Active Listening and its power to stimulate dialogue in many other contexts throughout all professions.